he is a member of the defense policy advisory board. he goes over to iraq to look at what is going on. the only member of the board did go there. this insurgency mounting and nobody knows what to do about it. he comes back feeling upset because feeling pangs of guilt because he was advising this administration. he advocated for this war. his son who like him had graduated from harvard had recently joined the army and was going to be sent to iraq, sent into this mess that he sort of helped create so he thinks he has to do something about this so he sets up a seminar in vermont and goes through his military journal and invite everybody can find who has written anything remotely interesting about the subject of counter insurgency warfare and comes up with 30 people. they all assemble for five days to discuss these things. the pivotal thing about this meeting is not so much what they discussed as that they met. most of these people didn't know each other before. they didn't know of one another's existence. they thought they were out on a li